Iowa Caucus Wrap-Up

Obama is the obvious big winner and the anti-Hillary candidate for the Dems. Edwards lives to fight another day. Hillary loses in Iowa and loses New Hampshire, picks up a phyrric victory in uncontested Michigan, and is finally defeated in South Carolina; she’s done. The national polls will narrow between Obama and Hillary.

Republican side

Winners:

Huckabee
Thompson
McCain

Losers:

Romney
Paul

Didn’t help or hurt:

Giuliani

Huckabee is the big winner, and now the GOP frontrunner. Thompson will live to fight another day but he needs a miracle. South Carolina maybe Fred’s last stand. McCain has momentum with a surprisingly strong finish to defeat Romney in New Hampshire. New Hampshire is pretty much do or die for Mitt Romney. Ron Paul’s final results were in line with the margin of error for most polls and the “Revolution” failed its first test, however, New Hampshire will be the true test because the organization is more mature in that state. Rudy didn’t seriously contest Iowa, so it didn’t hurt or help.

I’m one of the original co-founders of The Liberty Papers all the way back in 2005. Since then, I wound up doing this blogging thing professionally. Now I’m running the site now. You can find my other work at The Hayride.com and Rare. You can also find me over at the R Street Institute.

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Jeff Smathers

I want to remind those of you who feel that Ron Paul lost.

This is not an event, this is a revolution similar to that of our forefathers went through to gain independance from another government (England).

Time and patience and never, never, never give up.

Go and rent the video Mel Gibson’s ‘Braveheart’.
Get some guts’ and keep your passion.

Go Ron Paul. ‘It’s not your fathers campaign….’

This is our time and our country to take it back or let it go …. There will never again be an opportunity like today. The Bilderbergs will never let us any closer to freedom again.

leanne

Are you kidding? Ron Paul was polling at 1% when I first heard of him. Despite media derision and or black out, he managed to come away with 10% of the vote.(And this from a state that hasn’t shown a strong google response for Ron Paul.) He’s gonna kick but in the states that googled him heavily.

http://www.nateperkins.com/politics/democrats/25/iowa-post-caucus-wrap-up/ Political Ponderings

“Rudy didn’t seriously contest Iowa, so it didn’t hurt or help.”
While his strategy was obviously to forgo Iowa completely and focus on Florida, a loss this bad could hurt his chances more than he was counting on. When the dust settles, he will have lost to both John McCain (who also didn’t campaign much in Iowa) and Ron Paul (mostly regarded as a political joke). His fundraising won’t be great for the next month, as the media focuses on the other candidates and their successes. January 29th is a long way away, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a new leader in the national Republican polls by then, which will be another blow to his electability argument.

Bob

Its been awhile since I watched Braveheart. My memory is that in the end he lost. I know Scotland is still part of the Queen’s realm.
Currently, polls in NH have Paul 5th. If Paul’s going to win the nomination where does in win if not in NH?
Rudy needs someone other than Huckabee to win NH. (So far Huckabee looks weak in NH.)If no one candidate looks unbeatable going into Florida he still has a chance. But every loss does hurt fund raising and his chances.

uhm

Jeff Smathers he wants Ron Paul to lose. This is more of Freudian slip than anything.

He likes McCain. Since Thompson is like McCain it is only logical he would win too even through they scored in the teens a few points away from Ron Paul. Strange how Romney is in the losers section when he did better than the other Republicans besides Huckabee.

Rudy’s getting less popular by the day, so I don’t believe that he could afford to stick his nose in the air about Iowa. That could have gotten him viability momentum, so that people who didn’t particularly like him might come to think he’s inevitable (think about Kerry in ’04). Now they realize there’s alot of better, stronger options. I forsee a complete collapse of Giuliani’s national campaign if he falls below Paul in NH. The polls will show this out.

As for me, I do believe Paul needed more momentum than he got, so I’m looking to see if he can beat Huckabee in NH atleast and kill that particular thought, but I think come super tuesday, we’ll be looking at a contest between Romney and McCain….McCain being the only republican I could vote for this election season.

TerryP

Probably the biggest thing that hurt Paul was Obama. Paul did well with independents but Obama did even better. If Obama wasn’t pulling so many independents to his campaign Paul may have been able to pull a few more his way. Heck only 4,000 more votes or so and he would have placed third and we would be all falling over ourselves about how good he had done. Seems a little weird that roughly only 4,000 votes is the difference between him being a failure in some peoples eyes and a huge success.

The independent vote worries me even more in NH, however, as this is a state that Paul needs to do even better in. The problem is if the indpendents flock over to Obama (with his win in IA and his speech afterwords, this seems very likely) there will be fewer independents for Paul to snag and face it for him to have a chance at doing well he needs independents votes.

Personally I think that one of Pauls biggest problems is that he is to libertarian. He gets bashed around here for not being libertarian enough, but in the real world where the voting occurs there is still too wide of a gap between what most people have grown up to learn about gov’t, welfare, etc. and what Paul preaches. Many people want change, they just don’t really know what change means and they don’t want to give up anything to get it. They may not be ready for the wholesale changes that Paul talks about or just a little scared about losing all their goodies they are currently getting from the gov’t. With someone like Obama who talks a lot about change they feel they may get something without having to give up much. He makes them feel good. Now in actual practice Obama is likely to not change much at all. He will continue the practice of using larger and larger gov’t to try and get us what we want. He will fail just as everyone preceding him has. But by god he makes you feel good listening to him. He is just the lastest in the line of bigger gov’t politicians that sounds good but fails to deliver. They fail to deliver because there way of tackling issues is usually the opposite of what needs to be done in the long run. Paul’s way of tackling the issues is likely the right way in the long run, but is a very hard sell to people that demand immediate gratification and like all the goodies they get from the gov’t.